Pound's the history of usury -same essay

http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/7897401/pound_ezra/present.html

This history of usury can well give sense to the biblical maxim that the greedy will not inherit the kingdom of heaven:

• St Ambrose-cursed are the hoggers of harvest
• Babylon 3rd millennium loans of seed corn
• China -benevolent state monetary policies-
• Fascist Republican policy-rights to not of property
• Diffusing of an artificial ignorance of a usurocratic press to preserve monopolies and privileges
• suppression (aforementioned) of the colonial paper-money, fifty-six years after the foundation of the (private) Bank “of England” (so-called).
• The creation of artifical debt : Among the definitions of the word “banker” collected by Obst we find : a banker is one who buys money and debts, creating other debts;a banker is one who borrows money to lend it again at a profit(i.e., at a higher rate of interest).
• The advanced stage in the development of the usurers’ cunning marked by the foundation of the above-mentioned bank was clearly registered in Paterson’s prospectus : “the bank hath benefit of the interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing.” The cunning of usury.
• The Quakers of Pennsylvania enteredinto the competition.
• Aristotle called money NOMISMA , a product not of nature but of man.
• The purpose of a monopoly is to be able to sell the material or product monopolized at an unjustly inflated price, scorning the public good and victimizing one’s neighbour.
• Perhaps no financier has ever lived abler than Samuel Loyd. Certainly he understood as few men, even of later generations, have understood, the mighty engine of the single standard. He comprehended that, with expanding trade, an inelastic currency must rise in value; he saw that, with sufficient resources at command, his class might be able to establish such a rise, almost at pleasure; certainly that they could manipulate it when it came, by taking advantage of foreign exchange. He perceived moreover that, once established, a contraction of the currency might be forced to an extreme, and that when money rose beyond price, as in 1825, debtors would have to surrender their property on such terms as creditors might dictate.[2] Artifical manipulation at an endemic level for the aggrandizement of the few at the expense of the many and unjustified.
• The modern revelation of the usurocratic mechanism remained at this point until Arthur Kitson gave his evidence before the Macmillan Committee, when he traced the curve showing the relationships between debt and credit after the Napoleonic wars, after the American Civil War, and their bearing on the post-Versailles period.
• The monopoly of money is restriction of its circulation an aberration of the natural flow of resources and the stupid fall into the trap.
• Wars deliberately create scarcity and debt oblivious to the human predicament and the human victims as its necessary outcome. The treasures of civilization are necessarily depleted.
  

Captans Annonam Maledictus in Plebe sit
St. Ambrose went straight to the
point. “Hoggers of harvest, cursed, cursed among the people !”
The
history of usury begins with the loans of seed-corn in Babylon in the third
millennium B.C. The first mention I know of a state monetary policy refers to
the year 1766 B.C. when an Emperor of China, in order to alleviate the distress
caused by famine and aggravated by grain monopolizers, opened a copper-mine and
coined disks of metal perforated with a square hole. We read that he gave
this money to the starving, and that they could then buy grain where the grain
was.
It is not known whether the Emperor invented the idea, or if he followed
a benevolent precedent. But one can see that he understood the nature and
the social purpose of money, as well as one of the limitations of its
power. A similar wisdom emerges from the phrase in the recent Fascist
Republican Programme : “not the rights of property, but the rights to
property.”
The decrees of the Emperor Frederick II, King of Sicily, used to
begin with God the Eternal and the Creation of the World. This medieval
style precludes any idea that social factors are without roots.
My ignorance,
and yours, and that of the surrounding public is not to-day a natural
phenomenon. Above and beyond natural ignorance, an artificial ignorance is
diffused, artificially created by the usurocratic press, by several kinds of
organizations striving to preserve their monopolies and privileges.
The basic
fact of the history of the U.S.A. is the suppression (aforementioned) of the
colonial paper-money, fifty-six years after the foundation of the (private) Bank
“of England” (so-called).
Among the definitions of the word “banker”
collected by Obst we find :
a banker is one who buys money and debts,
creating other debts;a banker is one who borrows money to lend it again at a
profit(i.e., at a higher rate of interest).
The advanced stage in the
development of the usurers’ cunning marked by the foundation of the
above-mentioned bank was clearly registered in Paterson’s prospectus :
“the bank hath benefit of the interest on all moneys which it creates out of
nothing.”[1]
Paterson,
in other words, proposed to lend not money but notes, gambling on the very
likely probability that only a small fraction of the “depositors” would ever
want to withdraw their money at the same time.
The trick came off, and in a
grand way. But the Quakers of Pennsylvania were beginning to enter into
competition pro bono publico pennsylvanico. That is to say, they lent
their paper-money to farmers for purposes of land-reclamation up to an amount
equal to half the value of the land in question, requiring repayment in ten
annual instalments.
The bank in the mother country, through the
instrumentality of the British Government, had this beneficial competition,
which had brought prosperity to the colonies, suppressed in 1750.
After
various other vexations the colonies declared their independence, which they
achieved thanks to their geographical position and to the perturbed state of
Europe.
The Emperor Tching Tang had understood the distributive function of
money. Aristotle is right in saying that the Greeks called money NOMISMA
because it was a product not of nature but of man. Money is, in the first
place, an instrument of the will. The economic conditions of a society
depend on the will of its rulers (hindered by ignorance or contrasting
will-powers). It is true to say that the purely economic man does not
exist, if we mean that the economic problem cannot be solved without allowing
for human will as one of its components.
The purpose of a monopoly is to be
able to sell the material or product monopolized at an unjustly inflated price,
scorning the public good and victimizing one’s neighbour.
During the last
thirty years the news-stands and bookshops have displayed and sold a
considerable number of more or less “appraximative” works retailing the affairs
of various monopolies : of petrol, of metals, etc. But the great
whudunnit of money never appeared among them.
In a certain sense Brooks Adams
had written it, but not in “popular” form. The kernel of his exposition is
contained in the following paragraph.
Perhaps no financier has ever lived
abler than Samuel Loyd. Certainly he understood as few men, even of later
generations, have understood, the mighty engine of the single standard. He
comprehended that, with expanding trade, an inelastic currency must rise in
value; he saw that, with sufficient resources at command, his class might
be able to establish such a rise, almost at pleasure; certainly that they
could manipulate it when it came, by taking advantage of foreign exchange.
He perceived moreover that, once established, a contraction of the currency
might be forced to an extreme, and that when money rose beyond price, as in
1825, debtors would have to surrender their property on such terms as creditors
might dictate.[2]
This
is the kernel.
The modern revelation of the usurocratic mechanism remained at
this point until Arthur Kitson gave his evidence before the Macmillan Committee,
when he traced the curve showing the relationships between debt and credit after
the Napoleonic wars, after the American Civil War, and their bearing on the
post-Versailles period. (Notice to-day the American propaganda in favour
of a “return to gold”.)
Aristotle mentions the olive-press monopoly practiced
by Thales just to prove that a philosopher could easily outwit other people if
he had nothing better to do, or if he did not find the exercise of his cerebral
facilities more interesting.
The monopoly of money, or the restriction of its
circulation, is merely a variation of this simple form of monopoly. That
is all. The stupid fall into the trap. Wars are provoked in
succession, deliberately, by the great usurers, in order to create debts, to
create scarcity, so that they can extort the interest on these debts, so that
they can raise the price of money (i.e., the price of the various monetary units
controlled by, or in the possession of, the same usurocrats), altering the
prices of the various monetary units when it suits them, raising and lowering
the prices of the various foodstuffs when it suits them, completely indifferent
to the human victim, to the accumulated treasures of civilization, to the
cultural heritage

.